Enhanced hydrocarbon recovery includes processes for increasing the amount of hydrocarbon material (e.g., crude oil, natural gas, bitumen, etc.) recovered from a subterranean formation. Conventional processes of enhanced hydrocarbon recovery include water flooding, steam assisted gravity drainage, and steam flooding (e.g., cyclic steam stimulation). In such processes, a working fluid is injected into a subterranean formation through one or more injection wells to heat and/or sweep a hydrocarbon material contained within interstitial spaces (e.g., pores, cracks, fractures, channels, etc.) of the subterranean formation toward one or more production wells offset from the injection wells. Heating the hydrocarbon material may reduce the viscosity of the hydrocarbon material, facilitating the movement of the hydrocarbon material within and from the subterranean formation.
Disadvantageously, conventional enhanced hydrocarbon recovery processes may be ineffective at extracting significant amounts of hydrocarbon material within a subterranean formation. For example, in conventional steam flooding processes, the material properties (e.g., viscosity, material affinities and/or aversions, heat capacity, thermal conductivity, etc.) of the steam may prevent the steam from effectively penetrating into one or more regions (e.g., regions exhibiting low porosities and/or dead-end pores, regions progressively more distal from the injection well, etc.) of the subterranean formation, and/or from effectively heating and removing (e.g., displacing) hydrocarbon material from such regions of the subterranean formation.
It would, therefore, be desirable to have new methods and working fluids for extracting hydrocarbon material from a subterranean formation.